Inventing Television Culture: Men, Women, and the Box (Oxford Television Studies) PDF
Preview Inventing Television Culture: Men, Women, and the Box (Oxford Television Studies)
oxford television studies General EditorsCharlotte Brunsdon John Caughie Inventing Television Culture Feminist Television Criticism A Reader edited by Charlotte Brunsdon, Julie D’Acci, and Lynn Spigel The Feminist, the Housewife, and the Soap Opera Charlotte Brunsdon British Television A Reader edited by Edward Buscombe Television Drama Realism, Modernism, and British Culture John Caughie Critical Ideas in Television Studies John Corner The Intimate Screen Early British Television Drama Jason Jacobs British Youth Television Cynicism and Enchantment Karen Lury Television and New Media Audiences Ellen Seiter New Media and Popular Imagination Launching Radio, Television, and Digital Media in the United States William Boddy Inventing Television Culture Men, Women, and the Box Janet Thumim 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan South Korea Poland Portugal Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Janet Thumim 2004 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0–19–874223–1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Typeset by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk Oxford Television Studies General Editors Charlotte Brunsdon andJohn Caughie OXFORD TELEVISION STUDIES offers international authors— both established and emerging—an opportunity to reflect on particular problems of history, theory, and criticism which are specific to television and which are central to its critical under- standing. The perspective of the series will be international, while re- specting the peculiarities of the national; it will be historical, without proposing simple histories; and it will be grounded in the analysis of programmes and genres. The series is intended to be foundational without being introductory or routine, facilitating clearly focused critical reflection and engaging a range of debates, topics, and approaches which will offer a basis for the development of television studies. This page intentionally left blank For my son Joshua, my daughters Nancy and Ella, and the rest of the twenty-first-century audience This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgements THISbook aims to offer a practical feminist approach to cultural history—in particular to the formation of television culture in the UK. The questions explored here have exercised me for many years, and I am indebted to numerous people for their participation in discussions which have stimulated the refinement of my ideas. Amongst these I should like to record particular thanks to Pat Holland, Sylvia Harvey, and Gillian Swanson for illuminating conversations at crucial stages of the work; to my Bristol colleagues Sarah Street and Baz Kershaw for their helpful support; and to successive groups of students following the MA in Television Studies at the University of Bristol. I want also to acknowledge the benefit of the broad and speculative consideration of television culture which I have enjoyed with my Ph.D. students, especially Paul Ryan, Christine Truran, and Helen Piper. Similarly I have valued opportunities to present ongoing work, particularly at the Console-ing Passions and Screen conferences. Despite all this support there have still been times when I despaired of ever finishing the project, and I am both proud and grateful to acknowledge the rigorous and scholarly encouragement of my daughter, Nancy Thumim. She has read and reread drafts, helped me to tease out the complexities of sometimes unmanageably disparate materials, and generally both assisted in, and insisted upon, the completion of the work. Thanks are due to the series editors, Charlotte Brunsdon and John Caughie, both for their invitation to contribute to this innovative series and for their substantive and enabling comments on the initial proposal—I’m sorry it took me so long. Andrew Lockett, then at Oxford University Press, was most helpful and engaged with the initial stages of the project, as was Elizabeth Prochaska with its completion: thanks to both of them. I am grateful to Jackie Kavanagh and Jeff Walden of the BBC’s written archives at Caversham, to Andrew Whitehouse at BBC viewings, and to Miranda Scrase at the ITC library’s archive for their informed assistance with my queries. Peter Salmon was instrumental in allowing me into the Granada Archive, where Adrian Figgess and Peter Heinze offered invaluable and enthusiastic help: warm thanks to them and to Granada for permitting access to their rich materials. I gratefully acknowledge the University of Bristol’s support in the form of research leave, particularly for the one-year fellowship
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